


The Next Journey

by Araine



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Community: comment_fic, F/M, Kid Fic, Original Female Character - Freeform, Post-Death Fic, Timeheart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-13
Updated: 2011-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:40:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Araine/pseuds/Araine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she wakes up in Timeheart, it isn’t elysian fields and shimmering marble gates. The sky is blue and there is sand beneath her fingertips and she can smell brine and hear the ocean washing in and out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Next Journey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reading Redhead (readingredhead)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/readingredhead/gifts).



> For the prompt: Nita/Kit, there's no such thing as a happy ending (because nothing ever ends)

She’s been living on thirty-three years of borrowed time and, she thinks, mid-forties isn’t a bad age to die. It’s certainly short – cruelly shorter than it should have been – but Dairine’s own life was cut cruelly shorter by a rain of incendiary bombs. Her life is longer than it could have been, as well, because the shark that was her impending doom decided to take her death onto him. She’s never forgotten that she owes that life price, and now she’s ready to pay it back.

(She’s never forgotten Ed, like she’s never forgotten Peach and Fred and Ponch and Pralaya and all the rest who died for her.)

At least her daughter is mostly grown now and she’s not leaving her the loss of a mother when she is much too young. Nita would like to spend more time with her (oh what she would give now for more time, for just one more hour to tell her everything that she’s forgotten was important until this moment), but that’s impossible.

She locks eyes with Kit, one last time. He looks sad, but he’s steady.

“Neets.”

One last plea for her to give this up, for her to let him do this. But she’s much more suited, she’s had much more practice, and she could never let him. A very brittle grin crosses her mouth. She doesn’t trust herself to speak.

 _Look after Eli for me?_ she asks him silently.

 _Of course._

With that out of the way, she pours her life force into the spell. She hasn’t done a working like this since she was young, since her power rushed through her in leaps and bounds. Now it swells forth in a flood, to carve a path through time itself, creating a path that no threat can cross.

When she wakes up in Timeheart, it isn’t elysian fields and shimmering marble gates. The sky is blue and there is sand beneath her fingertips and she can smell brine and hear ocean washing in and out.

She sits up and smiles.

It looks like the Long Island Sound – and the wind whipping at her hair is very reminiscent of that stretch of estuary. But the water sparkles in a way that it hasn’t since time was new, reflecting blinding rays of a golden light in a million facets of color, and the city just barely visible in the distance reaches up into the heavens with the leaping triumph of the ascending sun. The beach stretches on in the distance, curving away until it disappears into light.

She feels light and whole and warmth from radiance far greater than the sun bathes her face. She stands and begins a long walk down that endless beach. How long she walks, she doesn’t know – it seems like a very long time, but her feet never grow tired or sore, and while sometimes she sits and watches the sparkling ocean on her left, it is because the sheer joy of the vista has struck her down.

She meets a scuttling crab and some seagulls along her way, going about their business. She greets them, helps them to find shells and scraps, and moves on. A dolphin hails her from the distance, and she calls back. A fish-hawk drifts along beside her as she walks, and Nita keeps up a steady conversation with her, hearing the bird’s delight in the wind rushing beneath her feathers.

And then, like he was always there and she just never noticed, Kit is walking beside her, rollicking lightly over the sand like he used to walk over moon dust. His eyes meet hers shyly, and he smiles.

“Hullo, Neets.”

She grins. “Kit!” She flings her arms about his neck and nestles into him, just as he draws her into him. She smiles and looks into his brown eyes – calm and steady and alight with love – and then they are kissing and the sweetness of it overwhelms her, his thought melting into hers.

“It’s good to see you again,” she says when they break apart, although she doesn’t go far.

“Yeah,” he replies. “You too.” He breathes – in and out – and she can feel his heart beating steadily against her own. Ever since she met him, he’s always been her rock to stand on, and the rhythm of Kit has become familiar to her. She brushes one hand against his shirt, seeking that steady cadence.

“Have you been happy?” he asks, looking a little concerned.

She thinks about that – does happiness have a meaning here, where it is not fleeting but stretches on and on? – and then says, “Yes.” It’s the best thing like an answer that she can come up with. “But I’ve missed you and Eli.”

“We missed you too,” Kit says, and he shakes his head in wonder. “Oh, Neets, she’s beautiful. I wish you could have seen—“

And then suddenly she is seeing it. Elinora Diane Callahan-Rodriguez, smile stretching across her face as she receives her Master’s Degree. Her dark-haired baby girl, strands of living copper shining through near-black curls in the light of a newborn star. Visiting cousins on another continent – and another world – as easily as though they were just across the street. Apprehensive but glowing as she first finds love; then despair when she loses it; and at last the strong triumph of love again found. Struggling to find something to herself other than the name of Callahan, to come out from other her mother’s and her aunt’s shadows without casting them away; considering changing her name to just be Rodriguez, but that never feels quite right, it would be a lie to say that she is not her mother’s daughter; rejoicing when she is finally accepted on her own terms, and nobody around her expects her to do the Pellegrino Passthrough or halt an oncoming solar flare, but they know that she can speak to weather patterns like they were old friends; holding her own daughters, Nita’s granddaughters, and telling them stories of young girls on other worlds, naming new species and striking down evil and finding it in their hearts to forgive; a line of life stretching on and on—

Nita gasps, and there are tears in her eyes. Her daughter is not just beautiful, she is glorious. Kit looks back into her eyes, and they are also sparkling with tears, but neither one of them are sad. She kisses him again because she can’t find words for how she’s feeling.

“So what now?” Kit asks her, his fingers slipping tightly into her own.

Nita shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says, but then after a moment she has an idea – she’s been looking at that city in the distance far more often. “I found you,” she says. “And I’m sure Mom and Dad and Dairine – and Tom and Carl and Roshaun and S’reee and Darryl and all the rest… I’m sure they’re around here somewhere. Why don’t we find them?”

She doesn’t have any idea where to start searching, but time, as she’s learned, has no meaning here, and she has faith that she’ll find them again.

But before she starts, she has one thing that she has to do; she realizes as she looks out into the shimmering water and sees a pale shadow off into the distance. Kit looks at her, and he understands, and he grips her hand tighter as they wade out into the water. The insistent waves do not slow them down, and soon they are swimming at the side of a long and pale shark.

“Hello, sprat,” he greets her calmly. “So you finally got here.”

“Ed,” she says, and there is a faint smile at the edge of her mouth. “I did what I could with the time you gave me.”

“I noticed,” he says. “If you’re looking for my approval, it is willingly given. You did much that was great.” He turns one black eye on Kit. “You, too.”

Kit nods his thanks.

“Is it right?” Nita asks. “What we plan to do? Find those who we loved in life?”

“It is well enough, for a start,” Ed says. “You lived long enough to love, and long enough to pass that love on, and that is a good journey. Now you start another.”

“What is it?” Nita asks. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“You will,” he says, and he swims away from them, faster than they can follow. His pale voice echoes back through the waves. “Good luck, sprat.”

Nita smiles, and clutches Kit’s hand in hers. “Go well, Ed.”


End file.
